A Study of Lexical Foregrounding in Niyi Osundare’s Village Voices

Abstract

This study explicates on lexical foregrounding in selected poems of Osundare’s anthology of poems tagged Village Voices. It is possible that one’s style of writing can be of deviating from the standard norms of a language to convey an important message. As such, foregrounding appeared to be unusual to many readers thereby making it somewhat difficult to decode messages contained in varieties of texts. Via the theory of foregrounding, eight poems were selected and analysed. The poems are; I wake up this morning, sleeping, at five and twenty and eating tomorrow's yam. Others include; Feigning Rebel, A Reunion, The Cocks' Comb of fire and unequal fingers. The result revealed that lexical foregrounding found in the selected poems were appositely foregrounded and encoded as well as disseminated their artistic visions, messages and meanings, which consequently, help readers and critics to comprehend and interpret the poet’s emotional feelings and dispositions on the selected poems to convey cultural and socio-political messages to his audience.